Is Jazz Black Music? (continued)

DR. HARRY EDWARDS: In a panel like this, I'm never concerned about the people who get up and leave. It's the ones who get up and head for the stage that I'm concerned about. [laughter]

DR. HARRY EDWARDS: So I want the lights turned up as we get into the second part of this. Thank you all very much for coming back. Are there any jazz musicians in the audience? Raise your hands.

DR. HARRY EDWARDS: All right. Good. Thank you very much for coming out. We have some very interesting questions. One of the questions has asked for a simple yes or no answer. [laughter]

DR. HARRY EDWARDS: And it did not take a great deal of thought to generate the question, since it's the question that's brought us all together. And somebody came up and had the temerity, the unmitigated brass, the gall, to say that "perhaps you all owe us an answer." Is jazz black music? Yes or no? Anybody want to run around the panel with that one? Mr. Hentoff?

NAT HENTOFF: Is-what is it again? Is jazz black-

DR. HARRY EDWARDS: Black music.

NAT HENTOFF: -music? Yes or no?

DR. HARRY EDWARDS: Yes or no.

NAT HENTOFF: There are many questions that can't be answered yes or no. [laughter]

DR. HARRY EDWARDS: Okay. Mr.-

NAT HENTOFF: And if you try to do it, you wind up stereotyping yourself. Of course, jazz began, as I said, as black music. It is still fundamentally in many respects black music. But it's played by all kinds of people. Remember a guy named Django Reinhardt? He was a gypsy.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Is that a yes?

DR. HARRY EDWARDS: Is that a yes? Let's hear the audience. Is that a yes? Okay. [laughter]

RICHARD M. SUDHALTER: The same answer. I mean it's yes, jazz began as black music, and now it's shared by the world. So it's a yes and no answer. It's a universal music now.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Is that a yes?

DR. HARRY EDWARDS: It's another yes. [laughter]

DR. HARRY EDWARDS: Angela? Aw, come on now.

ANGELA Y. DAVIS: Well, I think I indicated that I think that other kinds of questions need to be posed. But I would say yes and no.

DR. HARRY EDWARDS: Yes and no. [laughter]

DR. HARRY EDWARDS: You have that prerogative. Mr. Coleman?

STEVE COLEMAN: I mean, not be a repeater, I would have to say yes and no too, because it's a complex issue. And the thing is, Is the question about ownership? When I play it, it's black music. Let's put it that way. [laughter]

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yes.

BRUCE LUNDVALL: Well, it all depends on what you mean by "is." [laughter]

DR. HARRY EDWARDS: A Clintonian expression.

BRUCE LUNDVALL: I'm afraid I also have to equivocate and come down with, well, yes, and well, no. So I'm with you and you that way.

DR. HARRY EDWARDS: Oh, he's with everybody. And I guess, as the moderator, I'm obligated as well. I think absolutely unequivocally yes, and so much more more. [applause]

DR. HARRY EDWARDS: I have not a found a "no" in jazz. Everybody satisfied with that?

RICHARD M. SUDHALTER: May I answer your answer with a question?

DR. HARRY EDWARDS: It's absolutely yes.

RICHARD M. SUDHALTER: It's something that Steve just brought up, and I think it's valuable. He was talking about the fact that when he plays jazz, it is black music, because he's bringing a certain set of values and experiences to it. I would say when I play it, for example, I'm not-I don't think I'm bringing the same things to it, then, that Steve is. And I don't think what I'm doing is simply posing as a black person-I think that what I have been in my life, what I have felt, what I've experienced, is going into that music, although it may be different from Steve's and different from any number of other people. And I don't-I would hate to see a qualitative value placed on that, because one of the great glories of the music is that it has been able to absorb many backgrounds, many experiences, many points of view, and still emerge all the richer for it.

NAT HENTOFF : I remember years ago, Roy Eldridge did a blindfold test, one of Leonard Feather's, a Down Beat. And Roy started off by saying, "I can tell. I can always tell if the musician is black or white." He was wrong about 60 percent of the time. [applause]

DR. HARRY EDWARDS: Well, so much for that question. [laughter]

ANGELA Y. DAVIS: You see-no-Harry, one of the problems with the question is that the terms are not clear. When we say "Is jazz black music?" are we talking about black musicians being the only ones who can play authentic jazz; is that what we're saying? Or are we saying that jazz is related to the history of black people in the Americas? Is that what we're saying? Are we saying that it is linked to the development of black culture? Are we talking about the conditions for producing jazz? I mean, I would say that jazz is white music if we talk about the people who make all of the money from it. [laughter and cheers]

ANGELA Y. DAVIS: You know, we talk about the apparatus behind the musicians.

BRUCE LUNDVALL: I would remind you that Wynton Marsalis is several times a millionaire by now.

ANGELA Y. DAVIS: Oh, yeah.

STEVE COLEMAN: But the people who market Wynton are more a millionaire than he is.

ANGELA Y. DAVIS: The people what?

STEVE COLEMAN: The people who market Wynton.

DR. HARRY EDWARDS: I think that the point that's being made is that jazz is black music; it's Latino music; it's white music, whatever falls into that category; and I think fundamentally and at its base American music. BRUCE LUNDVALL: Thank you.

DR. HARRY EDWARDS: And that is where the real issue is joined. One, why-to come to the audience's cards-do we find it necessary to raise this issue of race? And secondly, is it possible to deal with it and transcend that fog-shrouded mine field and come out the other side with creditable answers and perspectives? We haven't had very much success in other realms doing that. Perhaps there is a way to answer this question with regard to jazz. Where are the black audiences, especially the young, if in point of fact is jazz-if, in point of fact, jazz is black music?

NAT HENTOFF: Oh, good question.

BRUCE LUNDVALL: Well, I would like to comment on this. Among the young audience today, sadly, it seems to me that there isn't that much observable interest on the part of young black people in jazz except for the people that are playing the music. And I find this a very sad state of affairs.

I know even when I go to the IAJE conferences, which I go to every year, I would guess, just by observation, that maybe 80 percent of the kids that are in those high school and college bands are Caucasian. It seems that even in the world of the record business I've had a very very hard time attracting young black executives, male and female, into Blue Note Records. Their interest is in rap. Their interest is in the much broader areas of popular music, if they are young professionals coming up looking for a job.

We have five or six black executives in our company, but it's very difficult to find young black people who are seriously interested in jazz among the people that we've tried to recruit. And I think that's a rather sad state of affairs. I don't know how it is at other record companies, but I believe it's the same. And many of the black executives in record companies have been there for a very long time, and it's kind of the same faces.

NAT HENTOFF: I think there's another dimension, though. Milt Jackson used to talk about this. What becomes popular? A lot of what becomes popular is what is on television. Think about how few programs, let alone series of jazz-let us forget Ken Burns for the moment-have there been. MTV has no jazz. Public television almost has no jazz.

Now, something may be changing in a way. This is historic. In Sarasota, Florida, for the first time in American history, all the fifth graders in the public school system are learning American history along with jazz history. Biographies, recordings. Musicians come in and talk to them. One of the fifth grade classes even has a jazz band.

And other school systems are beginning to be interested in this. If you begin that young, they can transcend all the other stuff. You know, during the-Teddy Wilson told me-I was very depressed during the-when rock became everything practically in music: recordings, television. He said, "You know, but some of those people who listen to rock, they really like music, and eventually they'll find jazz." And some of them did. But it's a matter of exposure. And that's what Angela was talking about. Who decides what's being exposed?

ANGELA Y. DAVIS: Uh?huh.

DR. HARRY EDWARDS: Thank you. [applause]

DR. HARRY EDWARDS: What impact is America's changing demographics likely to have on both the development of jazz and the marketing of jazz, that is, increasing Latino populations, Asian populations, populations that are nontraditional in the sense of jazz's longstanding audience in this country? Not that these groups have not contributed to the music, but they have not been seen as principal populations to market the music to in some areas of the nation. So what is the likely impact of these changing demographics on the direction and development of the music and on the marketing of the music is basically the question?

ANGELA Y. DAVIS: You know, I actually wanted to make a comment about the previous question. I didn't realize-

DR. HARRY EDWARDS: Uh?huh. Please.

ANGELA Y. DAVIS: -we were moving on.

DR. HARRY EDWARDS: Stop me at any time.

ANGELA Y. DAVIS: I think it's important for us not to see jazz as this static music, as this-which is-I mean, the tendency of some-I should probably refer again to Ken Burns-is to basically argue that jazz reached the point of its victory, its pinnacle, and then nothing else happened. You know, nothing happened after basically Dexter Gordon, you know, came back from Denmark.

So I think it's important for us to recognize that jazz has constantly changed over the years. And jazz was a popular music. There were audiences. Jazz was in a sense equivalent to what hip?hop is today for certain generations. And, you know, just as the popular music of one's youth eventually becomes old school, right-I mean, I-imagine the children of young people who listen to hip?hop having their children tell them, you know, "Do you want to listen to that old stuff?" because that will inevitably happen. It will become old.

Now, jazz has been in a sense accorded the honor of becoming classical music. And it has become more accessible to larger audiences that generally don't happen to be black in the process. But at the same time there's something about designating it as classical music that causes many of its-some of its proponents I would say to argue against any further change or evolution or not to see the value of jazz's influence on popular music today. Not to even take fusion seriously.

So when we ask this question about audiences, I think we have to, you know, recognize that the popular continues to change. Jazz is no longer popular music in the way it once was.

NAT HENTOFF: But I'll tell you what worries me most about the future. I hear more and more people talking about it, including people who used to be jazz musicians and say they still are, who are talking about the computer as a musical instrument, organizing sounds. Do it all in the studio. You don't need live musicians, because you've got better and better synthesizers.

So when you're talking about soul, that ain't gonna be there, no matter where it began. I'm worried about that future.

STEVE COLEMAN: Can I say something?

DR. HARRY EDWARDS: Oh, please. Mr. Coleman.

STEVE COLEMAN: That's-that concept has always been there. I mean, you had the player piano in the past, you know, which was a programmed instrument. It wasn't exactly improvising and-you've always had that aspect, but like what Angela was saying, the music continually develops.

The problem I have is-with the term "jazz" in the first place-is that it's talking about-it's freeze drying a music from a certain period and then saying, "This is jazz," you know. "Anything outside of these parameters is not jazz." And, as a result, that doesn't take into account the development of the music, you know, which is-you know, it's not a clear line between where popular music ends and this music begins.

I think of this music as more or less in terms of levels of sophistication. I guess that's how I think of the differences, more so than I think of jazz, pop, hip?hop, or whatever, you know. There are people who are intentionally trying to reach a certain level of sophistication with their music. And this was brought to me by an older musician, Von Freeman, he told me this, you know. And there are people-other than the levels of sophistication, there may have been a little difference between the emotional content of what Robert Johnson was doing and Charlie Parker, but the level of sophistication in the music is a different intent in terms of how it was to be expressed. And I think that that's still there today.

There are some people who say, well, if you have a synthesizer or if you have-if you plug this in or whatever, then it's not jazz. Or if it doesn't have somebody riding a cymbal, a bass player walking, that it's not jazz. And, you know, that's bull, because that wasn't there in the beginning of the music, you know. That's not there with Baby Dobbs and Pop Foster and some of the bands with tubas and everything, you know. That's something that developed in a certain period, and now everybody's trying to freeze it, you know, saying, "Well, from here to here, that's the music."

I mean, despite what Ken Burns and them were saying, we don't know what Buddy Bolden and those guys sounded like. I mean, you know, there were no records in 1904 and 1905. And so, you know, to say, "Well, we didn't hear it, but it would have sounded like this," is ridiculous, you know. [laughter and applause]

NAT HENTOFF: But wait. One thing. Sidney Bechet said, "You can't hold back the music," but don't you need musicians to play the music?

STEVE COLEMAN: Yes, that's true. You need musicians to play the music. And musicians are doing the music-listen, a saxophone is a machine. It's not something natural that's growing out of the ground. You don't find them growing-

NAT HENTOFF: But Ben Webster played that machine and it came out of Ben Webster, didn't it?

STEVE COLEMAN: Well, that's true.

NAT HENTOFF: He didn't do it in the studio.

STEVE COLEMAN: That's true. But you have to-read back some of the reviews and everything that we see when the piano was first invented. They thought it was a monstrosity that was going to ruin music, you know. Adolph Sax, the inventor of the saxophone, he got death threats, you know, for bringing this monster into the world. And I'm sure that if he heard Coleman Hawkins play, he'd want-he'd want to do something to him too, 'cause that's not what he intended the instrument to do. So times change, you know. [applause and cheering]

DR. HARRY EDWARDS: Just to take-Mr. Sudhalter-

NAT HENTOFF: Don't take the human sound out of it.

RICHARD M. SUDHALTER: Just to take a step back for just a second, you know, it strikes me that the four-letter word "jazz" is a rather slender vessel to adequately describe the multiplicities of musics and forms and approaches which have developed over a century of existence, to the point where now you call a band led by Eddie Condon a jazz band. You call something that Ornette Coleman plays a jazz group. You affix the label to musics which have very little in common with one another and even-Nat's point-to music which is being produced by computer-driven machines.

Perhaps it wouldn't be amiss to consider revamping the entire semantics of this thing and breaking it down into its component parts and being a bit more precise about trying to say what we mean when we refer to this music or that music or the other.

NAT HENTOFF: I couldn't hear it because of the feedback. What did he say?

RICHARD M. SUDHALTER: Nothing important. [laughter]

NAT HENTOFF: That's the problem with technology. You have too many microphones and too much technology, you can't hear anything. What was the question?

DR. HARRY EDWARDS: I think that another dimension of what is being discussed here in terms of all of these various changes impacting the music is the whole issue of the continuing relevance of the race question. As we move toward changing technology, changing demographics, will the black?white discussion, which has prevailed for the preponderance of the last century, be lost in irrelevancy largely as the music changes and as other populations emerge and begin to participate, perhaps even become the primary and principal audiences for the music? Is race itself within its historical guise going to become irrelevant? Will we cease to discuss black?white issues relative to jazz, since they are basically imbedded in 20th century issues and relationships?

STEVE COLEMAN: These issues don't have anything to do with music. These are issues, period, you know, and the music is just a reflection of what's happening in the society as a whole and the culture as a whole. And as long as it's an issue in the society, then it's an issue in art, music, dance, and everything else. That's the way I look at it. [applause]

ANGELA Y. DAVIS: But I would say, why-again, as I pointed out in my opening remarks, why do we consistently think about race as being about black?white relations? You know, why can't we think about racialization processes as being a lot more complicated? We rarely talk about whiteness in relation to race. It's actually the encounter, black?white encounter, that is seen to encapsulate our notion of race relations. And if-we can't recognize that the whole notion of color?blindness, which seems to be the ideal toward which people are urged to strive, is a racialized ideal. And the assumption somehow is that whiteness is the norm, and that once we all get assimilated into whiteness, then race will become obsolete. And I think that's very problematic. I think it's extremely problematic. [applause]

ANGELA Y. DAVIS: And something else that I want to emphasize again is that there are many Latino jazz musicians. You know, why can't we talk about the fact that the tradition is a very broad one? The impact of Cuban musicians on jazz, like Dizzy Gillespie on bebop; Puerto Rican musicians. Eddie Palmieri, for example, many years ago moved out to San Francisco, but could not find an audience for Latin jazz unfortunately here in San Francisco and went back to New York. But why is it that we have such a hard time thinking about the issues which aren't issues that we need to project into the future, but they're issues that we're addressing right now?

BRUCE LUNDVALL: I think-there's a movie called Calle 54, which is opening, I think, this month, which deals entirely with Latin jazz.

ANGELA Y. DAVIS: What is it called?

BRUCE LUNDVALL: Calle 54. It was a film directed by a man named Fernando Trueba, a Spanish director, and it's quite an extraordinary piece. And it deals entirely with Latin jazz in all of its various idioms. It features Paquito D'Rivera, Eliane Elias, Michel Camilo, Eddie Palmieri, a great number of Latin jazz artists, who by the way, and as we began to get involved with this as a sound track that we'll be releasing, we found that there was really a great backlash-that's a commercial plug-a great backlash among the Latino jazz artists, that their music was not recognized in the Ken Burns series, and it is a very vital part, path, in the jazz language that has been overlooked greatly. And there are wonderful young musicians coming up every day from Puerto Rico, from Cuba, from a number of different places in Latin America. So it's another avenue of this music, which makes it so beautiful and so vital.

And finally there will be a forum in the form of this film, which is quite a wonderful film everyone that really should see.