The record changer (Mar-Dec 1947)

:hropology as a defence measure to cover (nay inferiority. As far as Mezz is concerned, this is true: I envy his talent to May clarinet; in the first installment of IThe Anthropologist Looks At Jazz I explained that I became a "theoretician" necause I wasn't quite good enough as a piano player. That's the fate of many a scientist who works in a field descriptive ur analytic of any branch of culture. However, anthropology is not a "safe ground" and Mr. Higgins' letter seems to indicate that I have been sticking my neck out quite far enough. Mr. Higgins complains of my lack of documentation: the documentation was in the Anthropologist Looks at Jazz series L.nd I think it would be a waste of time to hover the same ground once more. He -peaks of my "fever to treat the Negro and music as a problem" and he says he would rather speak of the "Negro's problem in our society" than the "Negro problem." I agree; I always was under the impression that I had done just that — at least that's what I have been trying to do. I don't know about the "fever" but I do know about those "anthropological commonplaces." Of course, neither Blesh nor Mezzrow need talk about anthropology, but they have to talk about the •facts of life. Mezzrow does; the whole case history of his spiritual, social and economic struggle is a magnificent illustration of the musician's problem in a society in which the music he likes is no longer ja paying proposition. Blesh doesn't; he treats the musicians who do not play the way he likes as if they were moral delinquents. Anthropology, like Marxism and like a good deal of other commonsense philosophies, views man as a creater who acts not entirely as his own boss, modelling a world in his own image, but as a creature both of will and of social circumstance. If a musician fails to earn a living with the music he likes to play, he not only -tarts playing the music, that pays but he also contributes to a change of values. Art does not operate in the artist's mind alone. Blesh, like all adherents of what is essentially a Vart pour Vart school of thought, defines jazz as something entirely removed from the social conditions that gave rise to it. True, in the tradition of Jazzmen and the Jazz Record Book, he begins with a description of social life among the men who created the music. But this description aims at a compilation of all the quaint and odd elements of New Orleans Negro life: it does not deal with the economics of the story. Thus, from the \ beginning, the sting of criticism is removed from the one point where it might do some good — the economic history of the United States in general and of the South in particular. Instead we get an odd assortment of so-called "Africanisms" — some true, some false — without any reference to the social conditioning that helped to retain these Africanisms or caused them to be modified or even extinguished. As a result, the concept of the music that arises is an artificial thing; it has no anchor in -■pace or time. As times change,' as social and economic conditions change, the music MARCH, 1947 inevitably changes with them; as the musicians leave the orbit of the South in general and of New Orleans in particular, they naturally change as persons, as artists and as moral creatures: they no longer hold the same beliefs, they no longer think that the music with which they have grown up is the only music in the world, and they no longer think that they are morally obliged to keep on playing a music which is no longer part of their community. For better or for worse, the Negro musician becomes part of the vast American process of urbanization. He learns about the white man's music and he learns about the white man's economics. He accepts both because he has no alternative except political action. Blesh calls his book a "history of jazz," and of course it is no such thing. It is a black-and-white melodrama with the oldtime jazzmen as heroes and the modern swings jump and rebop musicians as villains. It says, / like this, and / dislike that, and then it shrouds the likes and dislikes in a great mass of neatly rationalized arguments — but the arguments have less bearing upon the music than upon the author's psychology. A history of jazz that takes its subject seriously will have to begin with the factors that caused the minds of the musicians to conceive jazz and it will have to end with the factors that caused the minds of the musicians to discard jazz and replace it with such later forms of music as those currently practiced. It is within the scope of the critic to say / like jazz or / dislike rebop music, but it is not within the right of the historian to identify his likes and dislikes with his historic data. That is exactly what Metronome is doing all along in its publicity for the "modern" school, and it should be a practice to frighten off all those whose taste and integrity operate on a less greasy plane. Mezzrow's book is an experiment in idiomatic prose because it is written "in his own natural language." Bernie Wolfe does mention the writers he considers to be among "the pioneers of the modern prose movement." Add Rimbaud, Joyce, Proust, Stein and the others that have in fact pioneered the modern manner, and the question answers itself. It should not really have been necessary to raise it in this connection — any standard history of literature would have served. "The change from jazz to swing was one of the numerous counterparts, in the ideological superstructure of the nation, to the contemporary change in our whole social and economic organization" — this baffles Mr. Higgins and he treats it as if it were an abstruse line of thought, presumably "anthropological," and not a piece of standard high school history. Its special application to the history of jazz seemed so obvious to me that I did not bother to elaborate. However, if Mr. Higgins is honestly and not rhetorically baffled, he will find it in the Record Changer of February, 1945, p. 6 passim., or in the final chapter of a little booklet misnamed A Critic Looks At Jazz which Mr. Gullickson will be glad to sell him. About "hot tone" — how do you play the piano without "hot tone"? By Mr. Blesh's definition, every pianist in the European tradition, from the invention of the pianoforte to the present day, couldn't help but play hot. Uh-uh. About musical intuition and education: it's tough to argue about the former; I've tried not to play hooky about the latter, but we're all poor mortals. About jazz being important as a social factor: did you ever try to earn a living? About my own social and economic life : I write these articles free of charge; I earn my living a different way. No fear of poverty if I don't tell the boys exactly what they want to hear. About having the anthropologists check my stuff : Herskovits checked the manuscript of A Critic Looks At Jazz and didn't like all of it. Is that bad? About that last sentence: Do I have to send photostats of my college work? About the implications of the whole letter: No, I don't really envy Blesh. I admire most of his work, and I disagree with a comparatively small portion. I am grateful to him for the work he has done. I am sorry if the division of space in my review of his book made me sound more critical than I really am. AVill you take this on faith, Mr. Higgins? I am sorry I oan't supply anthropological evidence for that one. Ill Mr. William H. Parry writes from the Geraldine Staff Club, Gt. Malvern, Worcester, England: "Dear Mr. Borneman: In the October issue of the RECORD CHANGER you have at last hit the nail right on the head and its penetration depends entirely on the wood it is being driven into. Were the great majority of collectors of similar opinion, you would very soon realize your aim. . . . Jazz has gained a firm foothold in Britain, with George Webb's Dixielanders playing in the right tradition, though not quite competent yet, and other small groups at odd points of the globe attempting to play something a little above the level of mediocrity to which we have been accustomed. These groups must have the stimulant of having something a little better than the Bunk and Ory recordings, which, although good, are lacking to quite an extent in musicianship. I can quite naturally imagine, on hearing the Jazz Information, Jazz Man, American Music and Crescent items, what these players sounded like during the true 'Golden Era' of jazz (if there ever was any such thing), but that isn't quite good enough for me now. We already have a virile music as a foundation stone; the only further requisite is that the higher state of instrumental technique encountered today be used in the right direction. With technically proficient instrumentalists playing collectively improvised counterpoint based on material worthy of such treatment, New Orleans jazz can never sound dated; not to these ears at least. ..." Aside from Mr. Parry's reference to my "aim" — whatever that may be — I find this letter a neat re-statement of the current dilemma of New Orleans jazz lovers: they like the old three-part improvisation on 13